"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprizes of the civil authority." – Thomas Jefferson

YEARS AGO, a man was visiting his elderly father and he says, "Yesterday a man hit a golf ball on the moon."

"That's a long drive," said the old duffer. "What kind of club did he use? But that's the worst LIE [no pun intended] that I ever heard of in my life!"

"I didn't say he hit it onto the moon," said the son. "I said he hit it ON the moon." And the dad says:

"Well, that's even harder to believe!"

Yes, even in those days some people didn't believe everything that the government claimed, including landing on the moon. These days it's "take our word for it or pay a fine!" What is it they say – a lie goes half way around the world before the truth gets off the ground? The lie is in the page one headline and the retraction is in fine print on page 14E. The power to the people' people now say 'Power to the establishment.' Art Buchwald once said:

"In this country, when you attack the Establishment, they don't put you in jail or a mental institution. They do something worse. They make you a member of the Establishment."

Yes, the New Establishment has just two purposes for NASA: outreach to Islam [HUH?] and, predicting the global warming temperature in the year 2099 (another Y2K). Meanwhile, we have to thumb our way to the space station with the Ruskies. SO – the question of the day, boys and girls, is "what was the BIG LIE of the week?"

a. 7,000,000 people have signed up and paid for nationalized health insurance?

b. Overnight the popularity of ObamaCare went to 49 percent (higher than his personal approval)?

This President thinks to change both "times" and "laws," and change is final! He is making so many changes every day that pretty soon he won't even bother writing them out. He'll just send Jay "Opie" Carney out to say that our policy on such-and-such is now such-and-such. Congress? "Who are you? I am the throne."

Problem being, the New Establishment that's running the EPA, the IRS, and the WPA have never even run a cotton candy stand at the county fair. And the "news" is getting harder and harder to believe! Isn't "carney" the word for a carnival hawker?

I don't know who wrote the USA TODAY headline ("Every corner of globe affected"), but he sounds like a flat-earther who also believes that the earth is square. And that the recent cooling of the earth is just anecdotal.

Seriously, the U.P. of Michigan is entering its fifth month of "anecdotal." Some people don't know where to put the snow anymore. Of course, the global warming lovers will say, SEE, SEE? "EXTREME WEATHER." And the minute we have the season's first forest fire, the enviro-mental fanatics will be back to "anecdotal evidence." The debate is over, and change is FINAL. The Los Angeles Times refuses to print any letters by skeptics, even though skepticism used to be the essence of True Science!

One of the advantages of being C.O.O.T.S. (Coming Out Of The Shadows) is that we old duffers remember things!

I remember the big snowstorms of the late-40s, some bitterly cold Thanksgivings on the farm in the 50s, and the year Lake Michigan froze over, 1962-63 (I was in college that year right on the shore of the lake). I remember working outdoors all through the 1970s "ice age" and 80 degrees below zero wind chills in the early 1980s.

I remember the ozone scare of the 1990s, Y2K, and studies that said milk and eggs will kill you (now they can't figure out why so many people have osteoporosis). They even used to try to tell us that coffee will kill us (we call coffee "the Swedish life-support system"). Cigars, of course, killed George Burns at a hundred (and nicotine patches are now used to treat Alzheimer's disease)? The point IS:

Don't swallow anything you hear from the government, and even less of what you hear on television.

AsNature magazine said, fraudsters in science evidently BELIEVE their own faked "studies." Let's bring back Fibber McGee and Molly. At least they were entertaining! One of the main reasons I keep writing is to try to renew interest in the Anglo-American writings of our forebears. I may write a column entitled "Western Lit for hip and cool Dummies."

By education most have been mislead;

So they believe, because they so were bred."

- John Dreyden (1631-1700)

[Educators talk about "Climate change" as if it's already a de facto part of tomorrow's history books. If there isn't any, they can always say they saved us from a close call with disaster.]

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions." – The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Marx and Engels

The NEW Establishment, however, knows that overthrowing the old social mores has to be a subtle and very gradual process, so they hide their true "aims and views." They think they can have their victory without firing a shot. But do they really know the American people? You can't snow 'em if you don't know 'em.

"Although there are many trial marriages, there is no such thing as a trial child." – Gail Sheehy (The Book of Quotes by Barbara Rowes)

P.S. Since we're talking about the moon, here are a few quotes from the earlier days of NASA:

"For years, politicians have promised the moon. I'm the first to be able to deliver it." – Pres. Nixon

"Four day vacation with pay and see the world." – James Lovell (re Gemini XII flight)

"We're number One on the runway." – Neil Armstrong (about to leave moon)

"I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." – Armstrong (Apollo XI)

"We are all on a space ship and that space ship is Earth. Four billion passengers and no skipper." – Wernher von Braun

PPS: I'm sure von Braun would be shocked to find out that NASA is now predicting weather for the 22nd century. And – as for the news media – David Brinkley once said, "The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were news."

These days, there IS plenty of big news, but the "mainstream news" is about such things as methane and ethanol (the New Establishment would rather have corn go into your gas tank than into cattle). Somehow, I have a hard time imagining Chet Huntley talking about cow farts with a straight face. Or at all!

THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN ON YOUR TV, ASK YOURSELF "IS THIS 'NEWS' OR A PSY-OPS OPERATION?"

Curtis Dahlgren

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in southern Wisconsin, and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton... (more)

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in southern Wisconsin, and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton. In the intro to The Fenton Bible, Fenton said:

"I was in '53 a young student in a course of education for an entirely literary career, but with a wider basis of study than is usual. . . . In commerce my life has been passed. . . . Indeed, I hold my commercial experience to have been my most important field of education, divinely prepared to fit me to be a competent translator of the Bible, for it taught me what men are and upon what motives they act, and by what influences they are controlled. Had I, on the other hand, lived the life of a Collegiate Professor, shut up in the narrow walls of a library, I consider that I should have had my knowledge of mankind so confined to glancing through a 'peep-hole' as to make me totally unfit for [my life's work]."

In 1971-72 Curtis did some writing for the Badger Herald and he is listed as a University of Wisconsin-Madison "alumnus" (loosely speaking, along with a few other drop-outs including John Muir, Charles Lindbergh, Frank Lloyd Wright and Dick Cheney). [He writes humor, too.]